Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Mr. McCarthy, I'll just quote a paragraph from Nyberg's report, IV. You don't really need to see it on the screen:

The Commission [Nyberg's commission] considers that this pervasive pressure for consensus may explain why so many different parties in Ireland simultaneously were willing to adopt specific policies and accepted practices that later proved unsound. At the same time, the apparent consensus of banks and authorities around the view that markets remained sound and prospects remained positive gave further comfort to both. A number of banks essentially appear to have followed the example of peer banks in a “herding” fashion; there is little evidence of original critical analysis of the advantages and risks of the policies. Widespread lack of critical discussion within many banks and authorities indicates a tendency to “groupthink”; serious consideration of alternatives appears to be modest or absent.

Now, when you moved, or you were in the Department through the whole of the 2000s, and then you moved to the macroeconomic responsibilities in 2006, I think. So, to what extent was this pressure felt and absorbed, or not, inside the Department, in your own experience?